While the media has been full of Obama’s ‘triumphant’ visit to Europe, or the scandal about Dominique Strauss-Khan, they have not told us much about the real earthquake hitting Europe: a vast social movement which is centred in Spain but which is having an immediate echo in Greece and threatens to break out in other countries as well.

The events in Spain have been unfolding since 15 May with the occupation of the Puerto del Sol Square in Madrid by a human wave made up mainly of young people rebelling against unemployment, the Zapatero government’s austerity measures, and the corruption of politicians. The movement spread like wildfire to all the main cities in the country - to Barcelona, Valencia, Grenada, Seville, Malaga, Leon – making use of social media like Facebook and Twitter, and videos uploaded onto Youtube; and that’s largely how we have got information about the movement outside of Spain, because the bourgeois media have pretty much imposed a black-out on the events. If they would far rather have us thinking about Obama, or Dominique Strauss Kahn, or the travails of Cheryl Cole, it’s because this movement represents a very important step in the development of social struggles and of the combat of the world working class faced with the dead-end that is capitalism. //internationalism

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